January 1999

Feature

Ten Principles For Your Success - Joe Tye

My first real job was cooking hamburgers at a McDonald's restaurant in 1968. Had I taken all the money I made working at minimum wage and invested in McDonald's stock instead of adolescent fun, I would be a whole lot better off today. McDonald's revolutionized franchising and devised a whole new system of product promotion and distribution, creating many millionaires in the process. Alas, the penalty of a misspent youth!

That image came back to me not long ago, when I was invited to an opportunity meeting for a Network Marketing company. My initial reaction was skeptical; in fact, the only reason I came and stayed was my admiration for the person hosting the meeting. Then it struck me that perhaps I was overlooking another marketing revolution in the making. Worse yet, as the author of a line of books advising people on how to get ahead in their careers, I realized that I could be poorly serving thousands of readers for whom Network Marketing could be a wonderful opportunity. It was one of those rare epiphanies in life.

In the following months I read everything I could find about the direct consumer marketing revolution. I reached this conclusion: Everyone should be in Network Marketing. Everyone. Before long, everyone will be, just as today millions of Americans own McDonald's stock, often without knowing it, through their pension accounts and mutual funds. Just as those fortunate individuals who bought and held McDonald's stock early on now have reason to rejoice, so, too, people who find the right Network Marketing opportunity-- and then get in, buy in, and stay in-- will be glad they did.

I agree with those who believe that Network Marketing will reshape the economy even more profoundly than franchising has over the past four decades. The Wave 3 revolution so eloquently described by Richard Poe is bringing the option of being a successful entrepreneur home to just about everyone. People are responding, but success will not happen automatically.

In this article, I will share ten principles which, if followed, can help assure your total success in Network Marketing.

Principle 1: Have Faith In Your Impossible Dream

Stretch your imagination to the utmost limits, painting a picture of a future in which your every desire has been fulfilled or exceeded. Then stretch your belief until it is as big as your imagination; have faith that your impossible dream can and will become your future reality.

Too many people live small, unfulfilled and anxious lives because they cheat themselves by accepting anemic goals. They don't believe themselves capable or deserving of achieving big goals. Instead, they pretend to be something less than what they really are, hiding their potential under a basket of feigned humility and mediocrity.

In their book Built to Last, James Collins and Jerry Porras identify as one of eight defining characteristics of visionary companies the pursuit of "big hairy audacious goals" (BHAGs). You can create a "built to last" Network Marketing business by adopting your own BHAGs.

Impossible goals bring about two paradoxes. First, they are actually easier to accomplish than timid little goals. When Millard Fuller established Habitat for Humanity, he set a goal of eradicating poverty housing all around the world. Anyone who has ever visited the slums of Mexico City or even south Chicago can see that this is an "impossible" goal. Yet in the past 20 years, Habitat has built more than 60,000 homes. It will take less than five years to build the next 60,000. On the growth trajectory, the "impossible" becomes conceivable, perhaps even inevitable. Where would Habitat be today if the initial goal was merely to eliminate poverty housing in Georgia, and if that were successful to move on to South Carolina? Right-- still in Georgia.

The second paradox is that impossible goals are not achieved, they are transcended. In 1951, Walt Disney established the "impossible" goal of building a theme park the likes of which the world had never seen. Even his brother Roy thought he was crazy.

Today, however, Disneyland is but a small part of the worldwide Disney empire. Big dreams tend to take on a life of their own, and end up bigger than anyone could ever have imagined.

A magnificent dream gives you four tools that timid goals do not:

1. It is a magnet that attracts people, money, and resources into your life. Steve Jobs was able to lure John Sculley away from Pepsi by offering him the chance to do something more important than selling sugar water. You will build a bigger and more effective downline with a magnificent dream than with the promise of a little extra spending money.

2. An "impossible" dream is a compass that keeps you from being distracted by seemingly urgent but really unimportant activities. You've probably heard the story of the turn-of-the-century industrialist Charles Schwab, who hired a consultant to help him make his business more successful. The consultant's final report, for which Schwab gladly paid an incredible sum of money after seeing the amazing results, was one simple sentence: Start each day by working on your number one priority, and do not move on to priority number two until number one has been completed.

3. An "impossible" dream is a magnifying glass that intensifies your every effort. As you move closer and focus more on those big goals, everything you do gets swept up in a whirl of accomplishment, excitement, and success.

4. A magnificent dream is a flywheel that gives you momentum through the inevitable setbacks. It took more than six years of litigation with competitors before Southwest Airlines was finally able to fly. It was the vision of a new and unique airline that kept Herb Kelleher and his colleagues moving forward through the times of darkness and doubt. Today, Southwest Airlines is by far the most profitable airline in the industry, due in large part to the strength of character that grew in those difficult early days when Kelleher and his partners did not have an airline, but only what at times must have seemed to be an "impossible" dream.

Principle 2: Create an Empowering Vision of Success

When you transform your impossible dream into a memory of the future, success becomes inevitable. Yes, you can actually remember the future--
usually more accurately than you remember the past. You can "remember"-- draw a mental picture of-- an activity you'll be involved with tomorrow that's more vivid and accurate than your recollection of your second birthday, can't you, even though the latter has already happened and the former has not? You will succeed in life largely to the extent that you can push your ability to remember that which has not already happened farther into the future. A memory of the future contains four components:

1. A mental picture-- The subconscious mind cannot distinguish between vivid imagination and reality. If you have a concrete picture of your dream as if it has already been fulfilled, your subconscious will work around the clock motivating and inspiring you to make it so.

2. Verbal affirmation-- We dream in pictures, but we worry in words. Negative self-talk will destroy your dreams if you don't stomp it out immediately with positive and self-affirming statements. Try repeating to yourself: "I am a natural born entrepreneur and rise to the challenge of every problem and every opportunity."

3. Action-- All the visualization and affirmation in the world will not transform your dream into reality without sustained action.

4. Adaptation-- Today, the Internet, new technology, globalization and other forces require that you be able to respond more quickly than ever to new threats and opportunities.

One of the surest ways of paving a road to the winner's circle is putting your memories of the future on a continuous play loop in the theater of your mind. It's most important that you keep playing that mental film at those times when the dream seems least likely to succeed.

Principle 3: Make the Dream Your Mission

The poet McZen says that someone with a job is never secure; someone with a calling is never unemployed. It's true! When you see what you do as a calling, you'll never lack meaningful work though the pay may at times be less than you would hope for.

Network Marketing gives people the opportunity to find work they really love, working with people they really care about. One of the biggest steps is to simply give yourself permission to find and pursue your mission. You can supplement your income, make a comfortable living, and perhaps even make a fortune by doing what you love to do-- meeting new people and making friends, being the master of your own time and efforts, and pursuing your own big dream.

Whatever Network Marketing company you join, join completely. Fall in love with the products and the people. Believe in the company. Trust
in the integrity of its leaders and your upline
supporters. If you can't do all that, find a better opportunity.

The preeminent military historian B. H. Liddell Hart said that a good cause is both a sword
and shield. Life is too short for boring jobs and meaningless work. Find great work to do, and make it your mission to do it as well as you possibly can.

Principle 4: Your Emotions Work For You, Not Against You

Entrepreneurship, and especially Network Marketing, is above all an emotional game. If you want
to win, you have to make your emotions work
for you, not against you. You must especially make fear your ally rather than your enemy. Fear is
the mortal foe of creative thought and decisive action.

People fear rejection and failure, but these are red badges of courage in our society today. Cowards don't get rejected very often-- they stay home and watch TV rather than put themselves at risk. The TV will do a lot of bad things to you, but it will never reject you. Lazy people don't fail very often, because they don't try very much. It's hard to fail at watching TV! People with big dreams and the determination to make those dreams come true will encounter many closed doors, and they occasionally fall on their faces. They are also the ones who find new and better doors, and who get back up stronger and more determined every time they fall down.

How do you make fear an ally? Here's my seven-step formula:

1. Give fear a name-- that way it becomes just a problem; it's a lot easier to solve problems than it is to conquer fear.

2. Talk back to your fear-- Ralph Waldo Emerson said that if you do the thing you fear, the death of your fear is certain.

3. Act brave-- Start acting the part right now. You've heard that life is not a dress rehearsal. Well, in one important respect, life is a dress rehearsal. The way you act today is your rehearsal for the part you will play tomorrow.

4. Transform fear into exhilaration-- because the physical symptoms are identical. The only difference is the meaning you choose to impute to the feelings.

5. Keep your attention firmly anchored in the immediate present-- All emotional pain is caused by time travel-- either anger and regret from the past or uncertainty and anxiety about the future. To live without fear, live in the here and now.

6. Transcend ego-- Lose the what's-in-it-for-me thinking and your attachment to possessions and outcomes. Much of the fear we experience is caused by concern that things won't turn out the way we want them to, or that we will lose something we have or not get something we want. Accept what you have with gratitude and endure your losses with courage.

7. Have faith-- The two ultimate fears are meaningless existence and infinite rejection. The only antidote to these fears is to have faith in the purpose of your life on earth, and in something better hereafter.

Principle 5: Raise Your Self-Esteem

I believe we each have a sacred obligation to consciously elevate our self-esteem. People with low self-esteem don't often accomplish great things-- indeed, low self-esteem often brings about a self-sabotaging behavior.

How many times do people not reach out for fear of being rejected; not try for fear of looking foolish? It takes hard work to raise your self-esteem. More important, it takes courage. One of the most courageous steps a person can take is to stand out from the crowd and let their inner brilliance really shine, even if it hurts the eyes of the people who are much more comfortable in the soft darkness of mediocrity.

I've worked with many very successful people. In addition to faith, they all have high self-esteem. Not arrogance-- to the contrary, people with high self-esteem tend to have high humility and are usually quite open to legitimate criticism. They are confident in their ability to succeed at what they do, and willing to gracefully accept and share the fruits of their success.

Program yourself with positive self-talk: "I'm a winner and winners don't quit!"

Decide to have energy.

Become a more effective time manager.

At all costs avoid negative people, and go out of your way to seek out positive people.

Believe in other people.

Principle 6: Anticipate and Learn from Adversity, But Never Quit

One of the people who attended the first national Never Fear, Never Quit conference was Candace Lightner, founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She was one of thousands of parents
who lost a child to a drunk driver, but was determined not to let her daughter's death remain a meaningless tragedy. From that adversity, she created a legacy that has changed the way an entire society thinks about drunk driving and prevented literally tens of thousands of deaths.

Times of adversity are, of course, when we most want to quit. They are also when we must at all costs persevere. Thomas Edison said that people would be amazed if they knew how close they were to success when they quit. Anyone who has ever spent a night in the desert knows it is darkest-- and coldest!-- just before dawn. Yet a spectacular sunrise is just around the corner, bringing with it light and warmth.

I've seen far too many people quit their Network Marketing efforts sometime between 12 and 24 months. That's absolutely the worst time to quit! It you're going to quit, do it right away-- because the first two years of anything are the hardest and success ensues when you persevere thereafter. In her book Frontiers of Management, former Harvard Business Review editor Rosabeth Moss Kanter said that everything can look like a failure in the middle. How true! That perception becomes reality only when you quit before you've succeeded.

Finally, don't quit at the moment of success. I've recently read five different books by professional sports coaches, and they all share the experience of finding their greatest danger occurring soon after winning a world championship. Once you succeed, raise the bar and keep working. More success and more money should only entitle you to graduate to bigger and more interesting problems, not to quit.

Principle 7: Use Your Resources Wisely

Concentration of resources is a principal determinant of success in war, in business, and in all other avenues of human endeavor, said Emerson. Concentrating your time and attention is vitally important to achieving total success in Network Marketing.

The Boston Consulting Group completed a study in which they asked people to identify their most important goals. They then watched how those people actually used their time. Most spent only about one percent of their time working on what they themselves said were their top priorities.

Napoleon said that the impact of an attacking army is mass times velocity. In other words, a small army can defeat a larger one by moving faster. I can't prove this, but I'm certain that the person who makes 100 calls per day will achieve success 50-- not five-- times faster than the person who is making 100 calls per week.

Principle 8: Create Value and Leave an Enduring Legacy

Entrepreneurship is not about being your own boss; every shopkeeper and freelance typist is his or her own boss. It's about creating something of value, something that outlasts you and your own individual efforts. When Network Marketers speak of residual income, underlying the vision of an endless supply of cash is the reality of a stable group of dedicated people who are learning and growing and working together. That's one of the greatest legacies any Networker can ever leave.

Ray Kroc, who started with a single restaurant and went on to create a worldwide fast food empire, was one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. Late in his career, when asked what he was proudest of, he could have mentioned starting with almost nothing at the age of 54 and becoming one of the wealthiest people in the world. He could have legitimately claimed to have created the fast food industry, and to have transformed franchising from a questionable business practice to mainstream America.

He could have pointed to the golden arches, and all other neon signs for the franchise companies that followed in their wake, that have transformed the very landscape in which we live.

But he didn't say any of those things. He said he was most proud of the fact that he helped
more people become millionaires than anyone before him. If you want to achieve massive
success in Network Marketing, consider Ray Kroc's philosophy.

In this industry, you will succeed to the extent that you help other people succeed. The greatest legacy you can ever leave is a downline of people who are more happy and successful because of your efforts on their behalf.

Principle 9: Enjoy the Journey

I recently shared the speaker's platform with a wonderful woman named Jackie Pflug. Jackie was a passenger on EgyptAir Flight 648, the hijacking of which resulted in one of the bloodiest terrorist incidents in recent memory. In the early stages of the hijacking, the terrorists brought Jackie to the front of the plane with two others, tied their hands behind their backs, and, one by one, pushed them to their knees and shot them in the heads. Against all odds, Jackie survived. Despite a warning from her doctors that she would never fully recover, today she has made a career of helping others cope with adversity. In her book Miles To Go Before I Sleep, she wrote:

Most of us spend a lot of time in our heads, listening to the tapes that endlessly remind us of our responsibilities, worries, fears, duties, and obligations. Usually, we're rehearsing some painful or uncomfortable experience from the past, or imagining some dreaded event in the future. It's hard to just live in the moment, yet that's really the only place we can fully appreciate life.

In their own ways, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Plato and the other historical giants who laid the foundation for how we think about the meaning of life all said that the great challenge of life is to wake up, to live in the present-- to live life fully conscious of the fact that you are alive. The challenge is to see the world as it really is, not as you wish it were or as you fear it might be. In other words, to live your life awake. Here are several steps you can take to help you wake up and pay attention:

1. Adopt an attitude of gratitude. Jackie writes about how she overcame anxiety and depression at being told by her doctor that she was still at risk for seizures by cradling her head in her hands and thanking her brain for all of the work it had been doing to heal from the gunshot wound. The more awake you are, the more thankful you are likely to be for all that you have.

2. Spend some time every day in silent meditation. I personally believe that quietly listening for answers without ego is just as important a part of prayer as speaking. And I believe that the answers will come when your mind grows still and receptive through meditation.

3. Be mindful of what's going on around you. Many of us spend much of our time in out-of-body experiences; our bodies are in one place and our minds are in another. To combat this tendency, I often carry around a little worry stone in my pocket. When I feel it there, I think of it as a little portable alarm clock and remind myself to wake up and pay attention.

4. Talk to yourself. In their book Hope Is Not A Method, Sullivan and Harper write about a young commander whose squadron was being shelled during the early days of the Vietnam war. Every hour or so, he would retreat to his tent to meditate, asking himself these three questions: What's happening, what's not happening, and what can I do about it? I've gotten into the habit of asking myself those three questions whenever I encounter difficulty, and I'm amazed by the fresh perspective it gives me on my problems.

5. Keep a journal. Both the act of writing and of periodically reviewing what you have written before can help you better appreciate the reality of your inner and outer worlds.

6. Have empathy for others. When someone is speaking to you, wake up and really listen to them, with your heart as well as with your ears.

Principle 10:Be a Leader

Recent research has shown that customer and employee loyalty is the single most important determinant of long-term corporate profitability. Your leadership skills-- your ability to excite and inspire people's loyalty to the company, the products, and to their own dreams-- will determine your future success in Network Marketing.

One of the finest books I've read on the subject is The Foundation of Leadership by Bo Short. After defining the other critical elements of successful leadership, he comes back to character:

Vision, courage, perseverance, and responsi-
bility allow one to do great things, but history only holds one in high esteem if he or she manifests character. This is the foundation of leadership. . . . Good character is reflected in who you are in private, the decisions you make that no one knows about, the things you do that will go unnoticed. It is impossible to be considered a person of good character if your actions contradict your words.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that character is destiny. And of course, your character is defined by the choices you make.

Decide to help other people be winners rather than helping yourself get rich; the latter will happen by itself.

Decide to do the right thing, even when you must pay a price; the price will seem small and the rewards tremendous in retrospect.

Decide to rise above ego, negative thinking and petty ambition, and determine to create an enduring legacy; you will earn accomplishment and recognition that comes only to people of great character. Decide to be great; you will be great.

JOE TYE is Chairman and Creative Director of Paradox 21/Never Fear, Never Quit, and Director of the Center for Creative Entrepreneurship. He is the author of many books and multimedia programs on business and personal success, including Never Fear, Never Quit: A Story of Courage and Perseverance.